


Sharing is Caring

by crossingwinter



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, a BDSM AU, per peer pressure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 02:02:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4041445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because sometimes you learn something new about your best friend...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharing is Caring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Idlebrain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idlebrain/gifts), [madaboutasoiaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madaboutasoiaf/gifts).



“God this is literally the worst book I have ever read,” Arya grumbles.  She’s lying flat on her back on the floor of Gendry’s apartment. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and she is not quite ready to go home yet, even though she really should get some rest and prepare for her analytics meeting at nine fucking o’clock the next morning. But that would require moving, and she likes the floor of Gendry’s apartment.  She’s done some of her best reading there while he plays Dragon Age, or Assassin’s Creed.  Sometimes she plays with him, or sits on the arm of the couch and tells him what to do, but mostly they just sort of sit there, each doing their own thing until either they get dinner, or Arya convinces herself to move her ass home.

“What are you reading?” he asks her, not looking up from his computer.  She’s reading on her kindle, so he can’t see a cover, and she could lie, because honestly it’s embarrassing to be caught reading this bullshit, but it’s Gendry.

“ _Fifty Shades_.”

“Oh.”  His voice is completely neutral, and she hears a few clicks from his mouse, but he doesn’t elaborate.  Silence stretches out, and Arya adds,

“I mean, it’s straight up abuse.  And the sex isn’t even that hot.  Like why am I reading this? I feel like my brain is melting.  _Melting_ , Gendry.”

“You could just put it down,” Gendry says.

“But I can’t look away.”

“Then you’ve only got yourself to blame.”

“I do not.”

They have this argument a lot.  Not exactly like this—this is the first time she’s read  _Fifty Shades_ , but similar things.  Her going clubbing with Jon and his stoner friends and ending up having to take care of them all at two-thirty in the morning because Sam can’t hold his liquor, and Gendry just texting her from wherever he is saying, “you’ve only got yourself to blame.”  Gendry thinks she doesn’t think things through.  She definitely thinks things through—things just don’t always go according to plan, and she tells Gendry that every time.  And he’ll reply that she doesn’t think things through, because if she did, they’d go according to plan, and he completely misses the point.

“Yes, you really do.”

“Gendry—” Arya rolls over onto her side to look at him more closely.  He is refusing to make eye contact with her, staring intently at his computer screen.  Normally he’s always watching her.  Sometimes she’s amazed at what he’s noticed while she’s been drowning in a book. But he’s just like that. It’s what she likes so much about him—the way he just seems to notice everything.  It makes being around him so easy, and pleasant. “People are reading this and think that it’s a good book.  Like it’s not even well written.  But that’s not the point.  People are reading this as though it’s hot, and sexy, and…and…” she’s struggling to find words. “It’s  _abusive_ , Gendry.  Like all this shit he pulls.  It’s straight up abuse.  What he does to this poor woman,”  Arya shudders.  She’d never want to be with someone like Christian Grey.   _Ever_. 

Gendry sighs. “Look, it’s not abuse,” he says quietly. “At least—not the way you think it is.”

Arya feels herself sit up and glares at him.  “And what pray tell about all this manipulative bullshit isn’t abuse?” she demands.

“It’s not what BDSM is,” he says carefully.  “BDSM is about careful and express consent.  Like if there’s…I don’t know, spanking and shit involved, it’s something that both participants have agreed on, and the relationship isn’t supposed to go into controlling other elements of life.  Which he’s not doing.  So it’s not BDSM.  And  _that_  is abuse.  You get no argument from me on that front. But like…don’t go thinking that it’s the BDSM that makes it abusive.”

Arya cocks her head at him. He’s oddly defensive. Well…not  _oddly_ , per se.  Gendry’s often defensive, but there’s something about this that’s different.  And the longer she watches him the more she notices a pink tinge to his cheeks.

“Gendry?”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t think it was the BDSM that made it abuse.  I thought it was the Mr. Grey that made it abuse.”

“Ok.  Good.”

“Gendry?”

“Yeah?”

She doesn’t know how to ask the question.  She’s not sure how to ask the question, because his cheeks are still pink, and she knows the answer to it before she even asks it.  She could just let it drop.  She could just go back to reading, or use this as the much-needed excuse to get herself out of Gendry’s apartment and on her way home.  She could pick up a Chipotle burrito, and watch some  _Brooklyn 99_  or whatever before going to bed.  But Gendry’s cheeks are pink and she has a suspicion…

“Why do you care so much? About the it not being BDSM bit?” she asks him carefully.

He sighs and hits two buttons on his keyboard, then closes his laptop, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s very defensive now, she can see that.  “Look, I go to a club, ok?  Some of the others there hate that book with a passion.  Because that’s not how  _any_  BDSM relationship should be, ok?  Like not even a little.  For all the reasons that freak you out.”

“You go to a club?”

“Yeah.”

“So you like getting…” she looks down at her kindle, but can’t find a decent quote, so she wings it, “tied down and fucked or something?”

“Well, I do the tying and the fucking, but yeah.  Sure. That.”  His jaw is set, and the blush is gone now, and his eyes are wary and Arya’s brain explodes with the image of Gendry in some pretty intense leather get-up, muscles rippling, whirling a set of handcuffs around his finger.  “I’d never do what he does though—Christian Gray or whatever.  I…It’s all about consent, and enjoyment and whatnot. But none of that psychological fuckery.  I mean, there is psychological fuckery, but of a very different nature, explicitly consensual.”

Arya looks at him. He looks at Arya. She’d never thought about Gendry’s sex life, not really.  She sensed he had one.  Or at least, she hoped he had one, given how much time he spent at the gym and how hot he was—or how hot she’s suspected him to be.  She’s never actually seen him with his shirt off.  They might just be friends, but it was very clear that he was hot, and she could appreciate that, from a friend perspective. You were allowed to think your friends were hot.  Absolutely. Nothing iffy about that. But looking at him now, she seems to see him for the first time, and that sudden image of him in like…black leather, and suddenly the room is very hot.  It’s that weird time of year before you can really turn on the air conditioning, and it might just be left-over warmth from the sunshine coming through the window.

“Cool,” she says, trying to sound nonchalant. 

He blinks at her. Twice.  A third time.  “That’s it?”

“Well, what else am I supposed to say about it?  It’s cool.”

“No like…mocking me, or telling me I have a control thing, or—”

“Well, you do have a control thing, but I could have told you that before I knew the whole BDSM thing, and it totally comes from—”

“I know where it comes from,” he snapped.

“I mean, it is cool!” Arya says.  She doesn’t want him snapping.  She hadn’t meant to make him snap.  “Like…that’s great! I’m glad that you’ve found this thing that you enjoy, and that it means a lot to you, and I’m curious about it, but maybe we don’t talk about it now while you’re on edge.”

“I’m not on edge,” Gendry says, sounding completely on edge.

Arya raises her eyebrows at him, and he sighs and presses the heels of his palms into his eye sockets for a second.  “Look it’s just…not a conversation I was expecting to have with you is all.”

“Like not ever?”

“Nope.”

“You were never going to tell me?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“It’s not, but I told you about getting my period sans tampon during Robb’s wedding.”

“That’s because you needed me to go and get you a tampon.”

“Would have been a bloody red wedding if you hadn’t,” Arya grins, and Gendry rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, but the two aren’t the same, right?  One of them is you needing me to help you out because you’re my friend, and this is…I don’t know…me baring the explicit details of my sex life, which you’ve never seemed remotely interested in.”

“I’m interested,” Arya whines.  “I like being supportive of my friends getting action, thanks.  You go Gendry.  Getting action.”

Gendry rolls his eyes. “This isn’t typical action.”

“Exactly. So why shouldn’t I know? I’ve been giving you the wrong type of support this whole time.”

Gendry snorts. “Sorry for putting you through that.  Must have been terrible for you.”

“So, you have a sub of your own?”

“Arya!”

“Am I not allowed to ask that question?  I know nothing. Teach me all, oh wise master.” Gendry stares at her disbelievingly, but she doesn’t care.  Maybe if she looks the idiot, he’ll calm down about feeling the idiot and then the awkwardness of all this can go away and things can go back to normal. Or as normal as Arya can think of them, now that she has that leather-clad Gendry image in her mind that  _won’t_  go away.

“I don’t have one sub that I work with,” he says through gritted teeth.  “I used to, but she ended up moving to Miami for her job.”

“So you just like…work with random people?”

“Sometimes? I’ve been trying to find a new one, but none of them have worked out very well.”

“Why not?”

“Bloody hell, Arya.”

“I’m just curious—it seems cool and I want to know more.  Like…I don’t know.  You always wonder how people get into BDSM, don’t you.  Like how they start trying it?”

“Well, I went into a sex store and found out about some classes when I was twenty.”

“That long?”

“Yes, Arya. That long.”

“You must be really good then.”

“It’s not a question of ‘good’ so much as how well you work with your sub.”

“Which is why you’ve been having trouble finding a new one?  There hasn’t been a good sub?”

“If you like.”

“What do you look for in a sub?”

“I don’t—it’s—I dunno. It’s different each time.”

“How do you go about finding one?”

“What, are you looking to get into this, Arya?”

The question hangs in the air for a second longer than it should, and Arya feels her face heating up and sees Gendry’s blue eyes widen.  “I don’t know,” she says carefully.  “I guess…I don’t know.  Maybe to try?  You don’t think you could like—”

“I’m not introducing you to Doms, Arya.”

“I was going to ask if you wanted to…like…be my Dom?  For a test off or something?”

Gendry’s eyes bug out of his head and a moment later he’s beginning to laugh, but it doesn’t sound like he finds anything funny at all.  “Jesus Christ, you’d be the worst sub on the planet, Arya.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know if I’d want to Dom.  I don’t know how.  How do you even train a Dom?”

Gendry doesn’t reply, and Arya presses on.  “Besides—you’re my friend.  And I feel like this could be…I don’t know.  Cool or something.”

“Tie you up and whatever else the fuck you’re expecting?” Gendry demands.  “Arya, I can’t do that.”

“Why not? I’d be really good. Like all submissive and everything.”

“Arya, I can’t.”

“Do you think I couldn’t?”

“I think you could, but I don’t think I could.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a little bit in love with you and having you be an untrained sub working with me would freak me the hell out, ok?”

“A little bit…oh.” She’s suddenly very aware of her breathing.  She looks at him, her eyes wide and it’s like she’s seeing him for the first time. She’d never noticed.  Not once. And he said it as though it was a fact he’s been living with for ages now.  Gendry’s in love with her?  And what does he mean a little bit? 

She chews her lip and looks up at him and as she does, he groans and leans over sideways, pressing his face into the couch cushions.

“Can you not do that?”

“Do what?”

“Chew your lip like that while looking up at me like that?”

Arya releases her lip from her teeth, blushing furiously.  Then she asks, “Is that why you’ve been having trouble finding a new sub? Because of…”

“It’s part of it. A pretty big part of it. Yeah.”

“So like…” Arya chewed her lip, then stopped because Gendry had asked her not to, but his face was still in the cushions so fuck it, she was chewing her lip, “You…wouldn’t feel comfortable being my Dom because—”

“Because you’re not a sub.” Gendry’s twisted his head slightly so his mouth is free of the cushion, but his face is still largely buried. “Because it would feel gross and manipulative à la Mr. Grey Will See You Now because I have this emotional baggage going into it and it might turn into me just using this whole thing as trying to get into your pants as opposed to showing you what the experience is. Because I’m clearly not in a position to Dom anyone right now because being a bit in love with you has fucked with my head a bit.  Because—because lots of other reasons.”  He stops talking, and his face crumples in not quite a glower, but in something that definitely is dejected.

“All right, all right. I get it,” Arya says. She reaches over and takes his hand and almost drops it instantly because that’s never happened before—that shooting thing right up her arm, like lightning, that makes her breath hitch. But if she drops his hand then he’ll know something’s the matter, and there’s nothing the matter. Nothing at all.

Except that Gendry’s a little bit in love with her.

“It was a silly thought. I’ll…I’ll either be secretive and find another way in, or let it drop.”

Gendry looks at her, his forehead now the only part of his face still pressed against the cushions. “No, it’s fine. If you really want to I’ll…I’ll figure it out.  You should be able to try, and honestly, I’m a good route in.  I  _do_  know what I’m doing, and…and we’re friends.  I’ll get a grip on myself.”

“You don’t have to. I don’t want to put you in this position.  It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s fine. Really.”

“Gendry—I don’t want to like manipulate you into this.”

“Yeah, and I don’t want to manipulate you out of it.”  Suddenly he bursts out laughing.  “Christ.  This is hilarious.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Like…yeah.  Just yeah.  Look. How about this. We think it over for a week and we’ll discuss on Friday.  If it’s a go, we’ll find a time next weekend.  If it’s not a go, we let it drop.  Sound fair?”

“Sure,” Arya says slowly. “Yeah, I guess. That works.”

“Ok,” Gendry says, and he sounds like he’s trying to steel himself for something.  “Yeah.  Ok.”

* * *

Arya spends the entire rest of the week unable to focus on work.  She tries.  She tries very hard.  And she’s successful, at least part of the time.  But if she ever takes a deep breath, and pauses, gives herself a moment to cruise facebook on her computer, or even catch up on some personal email, there it is again—that mental image of Gendry in leather.  Or Gendry with his blue eyes sparkling, and his cheeks a little bit too red because the room was a little too hot.

It surprises her that the hardest part is not that she’s unable to focus, or that these thoughts plague her throughout the day and night, but rather that ordinarily, if something like this were filling her thoughts, the first person she’d gchat/email/facebook chat/text would be Gendry.

And she really cannot do that.  Not about this at least.

And not really about anything else.  Because ordinarily she contacts him about five times a day with whatever inane thought crosses her mind—why she hates corporate, how her supervisor Roose Bolton really needs to get laid and ideally soon, how she still has no idea what to get Sansa for her birthday, how she’s glad that the freemasons don’t have as much power as they used to anymore—any, or all, of these she would have sent to Gendry in a heartbeat. 

But every time she pulls up a blank message on her phone, sees his grinning face at the top of the contact tab, she imagines him in leather and she can’t.  She can’t send him a message.  Because any message she sends is going to be altogether too clearly her trying to…to pretend that the next time she sees Gendry, they won’t be talking about like…him tying her up or something. 

But it’s still strange. Like she’s holding herself back, when really all she wants to do is tell him everything, because why can’t she talk to him before?  So what if he knows she’s excited about this, or thinking about it, or not thinking about it, or whatever?  He’s  _Gendry_ , he’s her best friend in the whole world.

And he’s a little bit in love with her.

Every time she thinks about that, something inside her squirms. 

She hopes he doesn’t think she’s been leading him on or something.  Like, all the times she’s gone to him before anyone else about something, how she always snuggles up close when they’re watching movies, or always finds herself spending the most time with him when they’re out at parties together.  Gendry’s always been special, different.  He’s always just gotten her, and she’s always loved that.  He always knows how to make her laugh, and he always knows how to talk her down when she’s upset, and he makes the best damn chocolate chip cookies she’s ever fucking eaten and…

And he’s a little bit in love with her.

“You up for drinks after work?” Terrence asks her at lunch.  Terrence also bakes really well, and she loves it when he brings his strawberry rhubarb pies into work.  He used to be called Hot Pie in college, but Hot Pie is too “unprofessional for the work place” so it’s Terrence here.

“Can’t,” she says. “I have plans with Gendry.” Something in her stomach twists again.  With excitement. Definitely with excitement.

She texts Gendry even as Terrence keeps talking.   _7pm good?  At yours?_

“Aw bummer. My friend Lommy’s in town and he’d love to meet you.”

“Lommy?” Arya asks, looking up from her phone.  And she’d thought “Hot Pie” was a weird nickname.

“Yeah.  You free Saturday?”

“I might have plans with Gendry.  I’m figuring it out.”

Her phone buzzed in her hand and she looked down at it.   _Yeah, that’s fine.  See you then._

“Lots of plans with Gendry,” Terrence says, trying to sound nonchalant, and failing. Terrence has all the subtlety of a jackhammer sometimes.  In this particular instance, it did not help.

“Yeah well, it’s…” she waves a hand noncommittally and Terrence raised his hands.

“No!  It’s fine.  I was just—yeah.  No big deal. Friends and stuff. Well, if your plans fall through, I’d love for you to meet the Lomster.  He’s excellent.  I think you’d like him.”

“I’ll try,” Arya says, not meaning it particularly. 

She ends up outside of Gendry’s apartment at six fifty that night, and sits on his stoop for ten minutes, waiting for the hour to change and trying to suppress the weird sensation in her stomach.  There’s nothing to be nervous about.  This is  _Gendry_.  Gendry with his dorky Star Wars t-shirts and his Bruce Springsteen obsessions and his big hands and she’s not supposed to go thinking about his body parts right now.  Or is she?  Isn’t that the point? That their body parts are going to touch in an unclothed fashion shortly?  Why does that make her nervous?  He’s her friend.  She’s definitely had sex with her friends before.  More than Gendry ever really approved of because he’s a…well can she call him a conservative ass now because he’s clearly got quite the sexual proclivities?  Oh this is all so confusing.  And she really should just go inside.

So she does, and Gendry buzzes her up and she climbs the stairs two at a time until she reaches his top floor apartment, and she’s a little bit out of breath when she knocks on his door.

He opens it on the second knock, and his face is red and a little bit sweaty and the scent of cookies wafts out of the apartment.

“Were you baking?” she asks at the same time he asks, “You walked up the stairs?”

“Yes,” they both say, then roll their eyes.  Then they both blush.  They really need not to do that. 

Gendry stands aside and Arya comes in, dropping her purse onto the couch where Gendry had buried his face last Sunday, then follows him into his kitchen.

“So,” she asks him. He’s putting cookies on a baking rack. They look moist.  “How does this work?”

“Well, I thought I’d bring the cookies out to the living room because this kitchen is too small for a proper conversation,” he says, “Then we’ll talk.”

“Ok.  Anything I can help with?”

“Nope, I got it.”

“How was your week?” she asks him, and he shoots her a derisive glance.  “I meant to text,” she says.  “I  _did_.”

He smiles. “I sort of figured you were in the same frame of mind as me.”  He sounds too calm, and doesn’t elaborate at all. Arya chews her lip, watching him carefully. 

“You’re fine with it?” she asks him slowly.

“Well…it was hard. But like…nothing about the week was going to be easy.  And. And yeah.  We’ll just leave it there for now, ok?”

“But—”

“Look, we can talk about it after.  If it’s a real issue. Which I’m…I’m not sure it is.”

“Ok,” she says slowly. She’s not sure what he means, but she’s also not sure that now’s the right time to press him on it.

Gendry takes a plate out of a cabinet and dumps the cookies onto it, then they go out into his living room.  Arya sits on the couch, and Gendry sits on the floor with the coffee table and cookies between them.

“Ok,” he says, taking a deep breath.  “So you still want to do this?”  There’s something very no-nonsense about his tone.

“Yes,” she says.

“And nothing I can say can dissuade you.”

“Nope.”

“And you don’t feel manipulated into doing this?”

“I most decidedly do not.”

“Ok.

“And you don’t?”

He looks at her carefully, then shakes his head.  She nods.

“All right. So, common practice—deciding what we’re doing in advance, making sure we both feel comfortable with the scenario.”

“Doesn’t that kind of ruin the surprise?” Arya asks.

“If I were working with you long term, I’d be more concerned about this.  But this is our first time, and, more specifically, your first time.  So I’m playing it about as safe as it can be.  I promise you, knowing what you’re getting yourself into won’t ruin the experience for you.”

She nods and reaches out and takes a cookie. 

“First things first—where. I’m of two minds, so I thought I’d leave it up to you.  We could go to a club.  I can get us a room and we’ll work there.  Upside: neutral space, and good for a mindset.  Downside: it can be sort of overwhelming to be in. Or we can do it here. Upside: familiar space. Downside…if you hate this, you may never want to set foot in my apartment ever again.”

She raises her eyebrows at him.  There was something so frank about that.  Gendry’s always been frank—sometimes brutally so.  But she hadn’t expected quite that level right now.  It’s almost defensive, like he was when they first met. She thinks, nibbling at her cookie.  A club could be fun, but at the same time she’s not sure she would really want to go. Maybe another time, if there is one, but…but for now. “Here,” she says.  “I’m not worried about never wanting to set foot in your apartment again.”

He nods, and she sees his nostrils flare slightly.  He’s pale.  He licks his lips, and the way his tongue darts out over them almost makes her tremble, and he wasn’t even doing it in a sexual seductive way.  It was a nervous lip-lick.  And yet she can’t quite dissociate what they’re talking about.

“So, next things next. Safe words,” he says. “There are a couple of different ways to go about it.  My inclination is the following: one safe word for discomfort and unsureness and a maybe slowdown, the other for a hard no end scene we’re stopping now.”

“Sounds good,” Arya says. “So like…”

“Things that you wouldn’t say at all during a sex scene.  Like, some people really like saying no while they’re—”

“I know  _what_  a safe word is, Gendry. I’m not wildly vanilla,” she says, rolling her eyes.  The left corner of his lip twitches upwards.  “I was going to say like…like ‘needle,’ or something.”

“‘Needle’ wouldn’t work,” he says carefully.  “Not that I think it’s bad, just that it might get confused with the word ‘need’ which I imagine—”

“Ah.  Right.  Ok. So like…” she frowns. “Like ‘Hot Pie’ or something?”

“‘Hot pie’s’ perfect,” Gendry says.  “Full stop. Now for a slow down?”

She thinks for a moment. “‘Nymeria’?”  Gendry gives her a look.  “She was my favorite character growing up. Did you never watch ‘Nymeria’s Ten Thousand Ships’?”

“Is that scifi?”

“’80s cartoon.”

“No.  I didn’t.  You’ll remember it?”

“Yep.”

“Ok.  Nymeria for slow down or discomfort. Hot Pie.  Nymeria.”

“Hot Pie. Nymeria,” Arya repeats. That cookie had disappeared quickly, and she reaches for another one. 

“Cool,” Gendry says. “So, here.  Tomorrow…night?”

“Sure,” she says. “Seven again?”

“Seven again. Hot Pie.  Nymeria.  Ok.  That’s logistics. Agenda then.”

Arya waits for him, but he reaches out and picks up a cookie from the plate—why can’t she stop noticing how big his hands are—and takes a huge bite out of it, then licks—god—some crumbs from his lips. 

“So I guess my first question is what sort of thing do you have in mind?  Are there particular activities you like the idea of, or are curious about?”

Arya reaches for another cookie.  She’s very glad that Gendry thought to bake them.  They’re very good for eating and gathering your thoughts. “Well,” she said. “I guess the obvious one is bondage, right?”

“Ah.”  Gendry sounds serious.  “Yeah.  No.”

“No?” she asks, confused. “Isn’t that the whole point of BDSM?  Like isn’t the bondage thing a whole letter in that acronym?”

“I mean, not the  _whole_  point,” he says, rolling his eyes.  “There’s other stuff involved.  But yeah. It’s important to it, I guess.  But not on your first go.  Like it can be intense, and you shouldn’t be all tied down during it if you don’t know what you’re doing.  Like I usually hold off till the third or fourth time before tying up a sub.”

Arya rolls her eyes. “Gendry, I’ve been tied to a bed before.”

He closes his eyes and his nostrils flare.  “Yeah, but presumably that was like…the main show.  Not a part of it, yeah?”

“I guess?” Arya says. She’s not sure how to respond to that, and from Gendry’s reaction alone she wonders to what extent he wants details.  “Look, I’m not going to freak out about it.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve never done this before.”

“Except I’ve definitely been tied down, Gendry.”

His eyes are still closed and he takes another bite of cookie.   _Come on,_  she wants to say, but she lets him think.  “How about a wrapping,” he says.  “It’ll make you feel like you’re tied down, or be a very loose tie, so if it gets intense and you safe word you can get out super quickly.  But nothing like…super bondage.”

“That works,” she says quickly, and Gendry nods.  “I did one, now it’s your go.”

Gendry half-smiles. “Ok.  Spanking.  What are your thoughts?”

Arya freezes. She knows of course that spanking is a part of BDSM.  She knows it. She’s not stupid. But the second he says the word she remembers Sansa’s bruises, and she  _knows_  Gendry would never hurt her the way Joffrey hurt Sansa, and she knows that the whole point of it would be for fun, but she can’t quite—but that doesn’t mean—

“That seems like a no,” he says carefully.  He’s watching her very closely, and his face is somber.  “I mean, it raises the issue of discipline up.”

“Discipline?”

“Like…well if I tell you to do something and you disobey.”  Arya feels the skin around her eyes do something, and Gendry makes a face. “See what I mean? I don’t think you’re a sub.”

“People  _like_  that?”

“Some do. It’s part of it, and that’s a thing that most subs accept.”

“So if you tell me to do something and I don’t do it, I get disciplined?”

“It’s about power dynamics. So yeah.  Unless, of course, you safe word, under which circumstances we end the scene completely.”

“So like…spanking. As discipline.” She gulps.

“You really don’t want it, so I’ll think of something else.”

“I’m a big believer in positive reinforcement over negative reinforcement?” Arya suggests, waggling her eyebrows, but Gendry doesn’t seem to find it funny.  “No to spanking.  So that’s going to go with a few other things as well.”

“So if we’re only lightly binding, and no spanking, is there even a point to this?” Arya asks, suddenly nervous.

“I can make it worth your while,” he says.  “I think. I hope.  Blindfolds?”

“Sure.”

“Crops? Without pain.”

“Like riding crops?”

“Yes.”

“Without pain?”

“Well, only the sort that feels good.”

She considers. She imagines Gendry holding a riding crop and feels her heart stagger for a moment.  “Yes.”

“Waxplay?”

“Like fire and shit?”

“Yeah.  I won’t burn you or anything.”

“Ok.”

“Anything else you can think of?”

“What do I call you? Like…master or something?”

Gendry smirks for a second before straightening his face.  “I was going to suggest sir.  Slightly less formal, but still gets things across.”

“Sir Gendry. Like a knight? Should I call you my lord?”

Gendry rolls his eyes, but she can see that he’s relaxed slightly.  His broad shoulders are less tense, and his hands are resting on his knees, and for a split second Arya follows the line of his thumbs to the inseam of his jeans up to his—

“Sex things,” she blurts out, her eyes jerking up to his as she feels a blush rise on her cheeks. She wants to look away, but she doesn’t.  She can’t. Not when he’s looking at her like that, like it’s taking all of his strength of will to look her in the eye. God his eyes are blue. Such a bright blue, like a summer sky or something. 

“Nakedness,” he says calmly.  Or at least, like he’s trying to be calm.  She thinks she hears a slight quiver to his voice. 

“Fine.”

“Manual stimulation.”

She swallows and nods.

“Oral stimulation.”

She nods again.

“Any infections I should be aware of?” he asks.

“No,” Arya says. She’s always been careful about that.  “You?”

“I’m clean.” She smiles at him, but he doesn’t smile back.  He takes a deep breath.

“I’m not putting vaginal or anal sex on the table,” he says firmly.  “I just. Yeah.  I can’t.” Because he’s a little bit in love with her.

“That’s fine.” Why is her voice suddenly so breathy?  She hates it. “That’s totally ok.”

“Cool,” he says very slowly, as though there are a thousand o’s in the word.

“So then,” she says. “Anything else?”

“Do you have any questions, or concerns?” he asks her carefully. 

Arya shakes her head, and reaches for a cookie.

* * *

Arya arrives at Gendry’s apartment at five to seven the next evening.  She digs in her bag for the spare key he’d given her the night before and unlocks his door before locking it again behind her. Her heart is thudding in her chest.  She feels like a thief, sneaking into his apartment.  It feels strange not knocking, it feels strange knowing that he’s inside already.  She hears the shower running in his bathroom and imagines him standing calmly beneath the shower head, water streaming down his shoulders, down his back and legs and—she deposits her bag and sweatshirt on the couch and steps into his darkened bedroom. 

They’d agreed on all this last night, after they’d watched two episodes of Daredevil. He’d pressed his key into her hand and said, “I think it’ll be better if you let yourself in. If I open the door for you, it’ll feel more like usual and less like this and not having to transition between frames of mind will help us both.”  She’d nodded.  It had made sense to her.  “So yeah—let yourself in and go into my room and take off your clothes.”  He’d said it as casually as possible, but she’d seen the heat rising in his face.  She’d nodded, determined not to blush.  If anything, it proved his point—that having the framework in place mattered. 

So she goes into his bedroom.  It is pitch black, but she isn’t sure if she should turn on the lights.  She has a feeling he would have left the lights on for her if he’d intended to.  Wouldn’t he?

She’s never noticed how loudly her heart could beat when it is dark and she is alone. Her hands shake slightly as she peels off her t-shirt and folds it, then unhooks her bra.  His room is slightly chilly and her nipples stiffen in the coolness, but she pretends not to notice as she shimmies out of her pants and underpants, folding them as well and putting them on top of his dresser.

He hadn’t told her what to do.  Should she get on his bed?  Or should she just stand here, waiting and naked.  She can still hear the shower.  Should she ask him?  No.  No she shouldn’t.  The whole point of this is that he would make sure she knows what to do.  She should just wait. He hadn’t given her any further instruction beyond taking her clothes off and she’d done that. God this is strange. If it were anyone but Gendry she’d have already thought better of it, put her clothes back on, and slipped back out of the apartment.  But it’s Gendry.  And Gendry wouldn’t hurt her.  Not at all. He wouldn’t try and embarrass her, or anything.  He’d take care of her, make sure she was safe.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.  She stands with her hands at her side, facing the door, waiting. 

How long she waits, she isn’t sure.  She doesn’t wear a watch, and Gendry doesn’t have an alarm clock in his room.  He probably uses his phone.  Arya had left her phone in her bag in the living room. She could go and check it—he is still in the shower.  But if she does, she knows that he’d come out of the shower at just that moment and it would all go to hell. 

The room doesn’t feel quite so chilly anymore.  She’s gotten used to it.  Her nipples aren’t stiff anymore, they’d gone soft and flat again.  And there’s something oddly calming about the stillness of everything, the faint sound of running water in the background. 

She takes a deep breath and looks around Gendry’s room.  Her eyes have adjusted to the just-after-dark light of his room, the slight golden yellow that seeps through his shades from the street lamps outside. She’s only been in here once or twice. They always watch TV on his couch.  She’d come in here once to bring him soup when he’d been sick, and once to help him pick a shirt for a date. 

And now here she is again, completely naked and waiting for him to come do things to her. That is quite the turn in their friendship. 

For one horrified moment, Arya feels her stomach turn.  What if Gendry’s right, and this does change things for the worst and everything’s ruined and he hates her?  But no.  No, she shoves that thought out of her head.   _If_  it’s a problem, she’ll deal with it later.  She’ll deal with it with Gendry, because that’s what they do.  They figure things out together.  So they’ll figure this out too, if they need to.

The water in the shower turns off and Arya’s skin erupts into goosebumps.  She hears movement through the wall, the sound of footsteps in the apartment, crossing the living room away from the bedroom door.  _He’s checking the lock_ , she tells herself.  She’d left her things very visibly on his couch, he’d see them there, know she is waiting for him, that she hasn’t changed her mind and run off.

She hears his footsteps again, and he opens the door to his bedroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. It’s dark, and she only really sees his outline.

“Lower your eyes,” he tells her and they drop to the floor at once.  She wonders if it’s because he’s embarrassed, or because of some power thing.  Probably some power thing.  He’s the Dom, she’s the sub, she’s supposed to be subordinate and all that.  All the same, it does mean that she can’t see him.

She hears a clicking sound, and sees a soft yellow light, and she wants to look and see what he’s doing, but she keeps her eyes on the ground.  A moment later, a glow fills the room.  _Candles.  Waxplay._  Arya’s stomach lurches.

She hears him open drawers, the stretching of cloth, and then he steps into her line of sight, and she sees long dark pants.  Not leather. Not even denim. Almost like pajama pants or something, with a knotted draw string. 

“You are not to talk unless bid,” he says.  His voice is gravelly.  “And when I ask you a question, you respond quickly and honestly.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes sir.”

She feels a hand on her chin, tilting her face up, and her eyes snap to his.  His face is completely unreadable, and the gold of the candlelight flicker in his eyes.  “You remember your safe words?” he asks her.

“Nymeria and Hot Pie,” she says.  Gendry’s fingers drop from under her chin.

“Kneel.”

She does so, feeling her breath coming in shorter than she’d expected it to.  She remembers having said that oral sex would be all right—and she is fine with it—this just seems very sudden. She keeps her eyes cast down, because it’s easier than looking at the spot right in front of her where Gendry’s cock is obscured by his black pajama pants.

“Kiss my feet,” he tells her and she stiffens, her eyes darting down to them. 

They’re clean. He had just showered and all. But all the same it’s…it’s feet. Part of her wants to look up at him, to make sure she’d heard correctly.  But she doesn’t want to open that door—especially not when he’d said he’d have to figure out another way to discipline her.

He hadn’t mentioned feet at all when they’d been hashing out what they were and weren’t going to do. Maybe he hadn’t thought it was a big deal.  She could say one of her safe words, but…but it isn’t the feet thing that she felt uncomfortable with.  It is the fact that he is asking her to do it.   _You’re not a submissive_ , she practically hears him say, and it is that, more than anything, that makes her bend her lips down to press an open mouthed kiss to the top of his foot—first one, then the other.  Then she sits up, keeping her eyes down again.

“Now we’ll begin,” he says calmly.  “You may stand.” Arya gets slowly to her feet, and Gendry takes a step, circling around her.  He stops when he is behind her, and she feels his hands in her hair, combing his fingers through it.  A moment later, her hair is in a ponytail and she can feel his breath tickling the back of her neck, the whisper of loose strands on her skin. He lets his hands trail from her hair to her neck, down her shoulders and back to rest on her hips for a moment. They are gentler than she’d expected, and his skin is hot against hers.  His palms are a little rough, but Arya doesn’t mind that so much she found, not while his fingers are tracing circles on her hips, then sliding down to cup her ass. 

She lets out a groan, and feels a rush of air on the back of her neck, a quick exhale. For a moment, she wonders if he’ll tell her to be silent.  He’d only told her not to  _talk_. Groaning had never been forbidden.

He squeezes her ass again, and it feels like every vein in her body is trembling.  It is strange—when she’d been in bed with Ned, or Denyo, or any of the others, she’d never once felt this much nervous anticipation. There is something so delightfully sensual about all this, something she’d never gotten from just leaping into bed.  It is new, it is fresh, but that isn’t all of it.  She tries to imagine doing this with someone else, and can’t, somehow. It is Gendry that somehow makes it all work.  Gendry, because she knows Gendry wouldn’t ever hurt her.  That Gendry will make this all wonderful.  Even if he asked her to kiss his feet first.

She hears him move again, and his hands are gone and he is standing in front of her again.

“I’m impressed,” he says to her quietly.  “You haven’t once tried to cover yourself.”

It isn’t a question so she doesn’t respond, though a number of responses flash across her mind—that the whole point is that she’s naked, that she doesn’t have anything to hide, that she wants him to see her.  But she doesn’t have time to settle on one before his hands are back, or rather a single finger.  It is tracing along her sternum, between her breasts, then curving to the left, swiping the underside of her breast.  She lets out another groan, didn’t even bother trying to stifle it. Of course Gendry would know that that felt good.  She’d had to spell it out for every single one of her past lays, but Gendry had just found it as easy as if he’d known it was there all along.   _He probably did_ , she tells herself.   _It’s not like you’re the first girl he’s ever touched_.

His finger is still running along the underside of her breast, and she sees him lift a thumb up to caress her nipple.  It stiffens, and she sighs, feeling warmth spread through her, right to her cunt, right to her heart.  She really shouldn’t be this wet yet, they’d barely done anything at all.  But she is. 

“Such lovely responsive breasts,” he says.  And he cups them both.  Arya bites her lip to keep from sighing again.  “Such lovely responses.  You are going to be fun, aren’t you?”

“Yes sir,” she said, taking the opportunity to answer, even if he hadn’t intended a response.

“And sneaking for loopholes.”  He pinched her nipples and she can’t tell if that was supposed to be discipline because it only made her wetter.  “I should have thought of clamps for these.  Ahh well.  Opportunities missed.”

He tilts her chin up with two fingers again so that she is looking him in the eye.  His eyes were dark, his pupils wide and black, and there was a flush to his cheeks.  “Get on the bed.”

She practically jumps towards it, going and sitting in the middle of it.  She watches him go to his dresser and open the top drawer of it, taking out several lengths of cloth.  She bites back a grin.  She’d likes being tied to a bed.  Ned had tied her down with some of the old ties he’d worn before he’d started making money, just to see what it would be like for both of them. It had been a little bit underwhelming in truth, but that was because he’d been a little drunk and not as good as usual.  The ties had been great.

“Lie down, spread your legs,” he tells her.  He isn’t even looking at her, and she wonders how he knows that she hadn’t already, but doesn’t let that thought stay in her mind for long.  Instead, she spreads herself as wide as she can and when he turns around, she is pleased that his eyes sweep up her legs to rest on her cunt, open and wet already. 

He licked his lips, and it isn’t like licking cookie crumbs this time.  Arya inhales sharply.  Not once had she noticed his tongue like this—not in years of friendship, but here he is, staring at her and licking his lips and her stomach was doing really rather spectacular backflips, it could probably have joined the Olympics gymnastic team and medaled.  He crosses to stand by her head, and he took one of her hands in his. He traces between her fingers with his own for a moment, then says, “I’m going to tie you to the bed. Loosely.  It won’t feel loose to you, but if you pull down directly as opposed to at an angle, the knot will loosen and you’ll be able to get free.  Is that clear?”

“Yes sir.”

He wraps her wrist in a light silky cloth, then ties it to the bed frame.  “Is that too tight?  Is your pulse cut off?”

“No sir.”

 He rounds the bed then ties the other wrist, and Arya smiles in spite of herself.  She is glad of this, glad she’d been able to convince him.  She understands why he might not want to tie her up—that had made sense, but she isn’t going to flee from him.  She knows that.  She couldn’t run from Gendry.  It makes no sense.  Gendry isn’t dangerous.  Gendry loves her.

He is standing at the bottom of the bed now, wrapping her ankles and tying them securely in place. Then he looks at her again. “I like you like this, spread and waiting for me to do with as I please.”  Arya feels her mouth water.  She’d never imagined Gendry talking dirty.  She wishes desperately she could say all the filthy things on her mind right now, how she wants him to, how she wants him to touch her, to make her blood boil, how she wants him inside her already…

Except he wouldn’t be inside her.  He’d said that wouldn’t happen.  She wishes she weren’t disappointed in that.   _It’s for the best_ , she tells herself.   _Because he’s in love with you_.  She looks at his eyes—really looks at them for the first time, and sees hunger there.  Hunger, and excitement, and nervousness and…and longing. Longing as they swept up her body, and came to lock onto hers.  Pure, unadulterated longing.   _Oh, I need to be careful with him_ , she thinks firmly.   _I can’t break his heart._ She wouldn’t be able to bear it if she did. 

She swallows, and sees something flicker in his eyes.  A determination of some sort.  He walks up to the top of the bed and sits down next to her. “Lift your head,” he tells her, and she does, still watching him.  He shows her a last piece of cloth, then covers her eyes with it, tying it behind her head before laying her back down.  “There,” he says.  “All ready.” 

That is the moment she really decides she doesn’t like this whole no-talking thing.  She really doesn’t like it.  Because she wants to watch him, wants to look into his eyes, to see what he is thinking etched across his face, to see how much this matters to him.  She bites her lip and then yelps because she felt his fingers running over her lips. “Such soft lips,” he whispers. The whispering makes it worse. “Such lovely soft lips.” And she knows what he was going to say before he finishes saying it.  “And they’ll be wrapped around my cock before the end of the night.” She wonders what he’ll taste like. She wonders how big he is. She wonders if she’ll have her eyes still covered when she does.  “Do you want that?” he asks her.

“Yes sir.”

“Good girl.” Is she imagining it, or does his voice quiver.  “Practice now. Show me what you’ll give me later.”  And he slides two fingers into her mouth.  She sucks at them, licks them, tasting his skin as she runs her tongue over his fingertips. He slides a third finger in and pumps his hand in and out slightly before pulling them loose completely. A moment later, she feels his fingers dripping her own saliva over her nipple as he rolls it, pinches it. She whimpers and her stomach clenches.

And his fingers are gone. She feels the mattress underneath her shift as he stands up again, hears his footsteps as he crosses the room again, and a moment later, she feels something on her leg.  It’s not his hands—it’s too cold for it—it’s soft and leathery and—

A crop. He’d mentioned using a riding crop.  But nothing painful, or if it were painful, it would be the good kind of painful. “You know what I like about having you blindfolded?”

 _That you can’t be scared of looking at my eyes?_ “No sir.”

“That you don’t know what’s coming at any point.  You’re just lying there, waiting for me to choose what you’ll feel next, but you don’t know what to anticipate so everything’s on edge.”

She feels a flick on the inside of her knee and gasps.  It stings, but it doesn’t hurt.  If anything it almost feels good.  She bites her lip, and a moment later, she feels the smack of the crop against her thigh. 

She wonders if he thinks of it as a game.  He must—there’s no other way.  One second, he’s at her legs, the next on the inside of her arms.  And every place it lands, there’s a flash of shock, followed by a wave of warmth that spreads across her skin and makes her heart pump faster. And surely he must know that’s what it’s doing to her.  Must know that every slap the crop makes against her skin makes her heart flutter, her stomach clench, sends heat right between her legs.

His game goes on for several minutes, until Arya’s practically writhing on the bed. Then he stops, and she feels the crop trail across her chest.  He nudges the underside of her breast with the crop, and the flesh rolls along the skin of her chest.  He smacks her nipples and she cries out.  “I really should have thought of clamps,” he says again, and he slaps her nipple with the crop again.  “One for each of these, pinching them tight holding in the blood until I take them off and it rushes back out again.”  She swallows.  She’s not sure what she thinks about it, but then again, he’s slapping her nipples with a riding crop right now and they feel fantastic, so maybe he’s right about the clamps. “They’d be swollen,” he murmurs. “And I’d kiss them when I took the clamps off, ease the sensation so it didn’t hurt.”  She ignores the part where he mentions pain because the image of Gendry kissing her nipples, suckling them, while she holds his head to her chest is overpowering her and it makes her moan.  “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes sir,” she gulps. She’s pretty sure she hears him growl. 

“And where else do you want my lips, Arya?”  It’s the first time he’s said her name all evening, and his voice is thick. The crop is gone from her breasts now, it’s sliding down her stomach to that sweet spot between her legs. Or at least, that’s where she thought it was going, but it ends up on the inside of her thighs—close enough to tease, but not enough to be where she wants it to be.  She makes a whining sound, and she hears Gendry laugh and he smacks her lightly before rising the crop, at long last, to her cunt. “Do you want them here?” His voice is so quiet she almost can’t hear it.

“Yes sir,” she breathes, hearing the air shake in her voice.  “Yes please, sir.”

She feels the sting of the crop between her legs, the slap of leather against dampened flesh that matches in time the tremors shooting up her from her clit and she feels warm wetness gushing out of her as her whole body seems to tremble and arch and she hears herself crying out.  “Oh fuck. Oh  _fuck_.”

Because this is an orgasm. Not the sort that comes from her rutting against her pillows on nights when she’s a little lonely and a lot horny, this is a capital O orgasm, like the ones that always grace the cover of magazines—twelve ways to make your orgasms more  _mindblowing_.  Well she can think of only one right now, and it’s Gendry with a riding crop and her blood pumping so hot and fast through her body that it almost feels perversely cold.  She’s aware of making noises.  They’re the sort of noises that are embarrassing if you aren’t having sex, but she doesn’t care at all.

Her arms are limp, hanging as they are in their ties.  She could pull them loose so easily, but she’s not going to.  Not just yet.  Gendry will untie her when they’re done.  Right now she’s just going to bask in the warmth of it all.

She can feel his eyes on her, even though she can’t see him.  She can tell because the crop is still between her legs, but it’s limp, just sort of there—not pressing or prodding, just there.  She breathes heavily, waiting for her pulse to calm down.

“Do you have any idea what you look like right now?” he asks.

“No sir,” she manages.

“Beautiful. You look so beautiful.”

The crop is gone and his fingers are between her legs now, rubbing gently up and down her slit. It’s still throbbing, still twitching from her orgasm, and she tries to tilt her head to see if she can see him through a gap towards the bottom of the blindfold.  But she can’t see anything.  He’d tied it well.

“The real question,” he whispers, so quietly she can barely hear it, “is how many more times is that going to happen.”  It’s not a question, though.  He didn’t ask. He’s telling her, and she can’t respond.  It’s like some perverse game of Simon Says, and Arya refuses to lose it. 

His fingers are so warm, and he slides two of them inside her, stroking the wall lining her pubic bone and Arya lets out a mewling noise.  It’s sensitive.  Not as sensitive as her clit, but still more sensitive than she’s ready for at just that moment. Her stomach is tying itself in knots, and she’s breathing hard. 

“How many can you take, Arya?”

“I don’t know, sir.” One more—certainly. She’s used to that. It’s not a regular occurrence, but it’s happened before, in bed with someone else, or with her vibrator when she’s blocked up.  But never as intense as that orgasm.

“Well, we’ll have to find out,” he says.  And his thumb’s on her clit, and his fingers curl inside her and two, three coordinated swipes and her head is spinning again, and her body is convulsing, and she’s trying to clamp her legs shut around his hand because if she clamps her legs shut then maybe it will keep some of the fire from spreading through her body the way it is, but she can’t because they’re tied to his bedframe. 

She’s truly limp now, limp and gasping and warm, her heart beating hard in her chest as if she’d just run a five-k.  Even beneath the blindfold, her eyelids droop shut, and she listens to the sound of her breathing steadying as Gendry pulls his hand out of her and she hears his footsteps on the bed.  She’s tingling all over—the skin of her stomach, her fingers, her lips—tingling everywhere.

“Are you falling asleep on me, Arya?” he sounds both cross and amused.

“No,” she mumbles, though she’s not quite sure it’s true.  Then she lets out a hiss because something hot hits the skin of her stomach, and if she’d been worn out from her orgasms, she’s fully awake now.

“No?”

“No sir.”

If he’s annoyed at her, he lets it slide.  “See, I think that’s not quite true,” Gendry says and another dribble of wax lands on her leg this time.  “I think you are lying to me right now.  Are you lying to me?”

“No sir,” she lies.

“Because I seem to recall that we had a few more things planned for tonight.”  God that wax stings, landing now on her arm, hot and piercing, then slowly fading away to nothingness as Gendry moves the candle to wherever he is sending it next.  “I seem to recall that you were going to suck my cock, Arya. Do you remember this?”

“Yes sir,” she tries to say, but it turns into a garbled cry as wax lands on the tip of her nipple. It’s hotter there than it had been on her stomach, and it hurts, but not a bad kind of hurt. It’s like the riding crop—somehow it feels right.  And it sooths itself as the wax cools and hardens on her skin. 

“You want it?”

“Yes sir.”

“Say it.”

“I want to suck your cock, sir.”  She does. She really does. She wants to see what he looks like when he falls apart, wants to see what she does to him. 

And she feels his lips on her chest, on her nipple—the one he hadn’t just dribbled wax onto, drawing the stiffened point of it into his mouth and biting it lightly as he sucks on it.  Arya tries to move her hands to hug his head to her chest, but she can’t.  She’d forgotten her arms were tied. Instead she arches into him, hoping that he’s being careful with that candle, and knowing that he is. She feels wax on her stomach, right above where her pubic hair begins to grow, right at the same time that he rubs his teeth against her nipple and she moans again. 

When he pulls away, she takes a deep breath.  “That wax looks like my cum all over you,” he says, and he reaches over to roll her other nipple between his fingers.  She feels it cracking away under his touch.  She sighs, and arches her back again, and she hears him make that quiet hissing laugh again.  “Still eager.” He sounds pleased. “Do you want to come again?”

“Yes sir,” she hears herself saying.

“Greedy girl. It’s not your turn.” His hand is gone, his weight is gone from the bed, and she hears the sound of something being set down—the candle, probably, and then the sound of cloth falling to the floor. “It’s my turn.”

The bed shifts underneath her again, and then she feels the warmth of his skin on either side of her, and something long and stiff and soft and hot resting on her stomach. He shifts, edging his way up the bed, up her body on his knees until his cock is between her breasts, under her chin, and his knees are right against her armpits. 

“Lift your head,” he breathes, and she doesn’t hesitate to do so.  She feels soft skin against her lips, a little bit moist, and a drop of something transfers from the tip of his cock to her lips. She smiles.  “You like that?  You like my cock at your lips?”

“Yes sir,” she purrs.

“Open your lips.”

And she does, and a moment later he’s inside her and god he’s thick.  She’d had a sense of it when he’d been resting his dick against her stomach.  The angle’s odd, and he’s thick, and she might have gagged if she weren’t determined not to. She’s determined to make this perfect for him, to put every bit of blowjob experience she’s ever had into this blowjob because he’d just made her come twice and he’d all but said that she’d come a third time, and this is such a spectacular night and she can’t quite believe that she is sharing it with him.  It couldn’t be more perfect, and she wants him to feel that.

So she massages him with her tongue, runs it along the thick vein on the underside of his shaft, swirls it in circles over the tip of his cock, dipping it into the hole at the top. He pumps into her mouth, and she rises to meet him, relaxing her jaw and throat as best she can to take him in as deep as possible, her nose brushing against the thick dark hair at the base of his cock before he pulls away again.  It’s odd—even as he thrusts in and out, and even as stiff as he is, she can still feel just how delicate his skin is as it rubs against her lips.

And Gendry moans. He moans loudly, or groans, or whimpers, or all those noises that Arya’s sure she had made earlier that night.  He makes them all too, and she’s feels his hands on the top of her head, weaving into the base of her ponytail, holding her while he thrusts, and she feels that strange bubbling sensation in the veins beneath her lips right before he cries out and begins to spurt down her throat.  She drinks him down—every last drop.

His hands are gone from her head, but his cock is still between her lips.  She’s not sure how long he straddles her, but he does begin to go limp before he moves again.  He doesn’t say a single word as she feels him pull himself off her. His lips are at her throat now, kissing her on her neck, nipping at her, drawing her skin between his teeth. He kisses his way down her chest, sucking her nipples again, and she feels his fingers between her legs again, rubbing at her, almost frenzied somehow.  He kisses his way down her stomach, dipping his tongue into her bellybutton—something that she’d not expected to send shocks through her but it does.  He wipes away cracking wax, and kisses and kisses, and kisses until he’s between her legs and his tongue is rubbing up and down her slit.  He draws her clit between his lips and sucks on it, hard, then traces circles into it as Arya had just done with the tip of his cock.  She feels fingers inside her again, three this time, pumping in and out of her in a rhythm that matches the swiping of his tongue.

It builds more slowly. And Arya almost feels bad. The last two had come so quickly, so shockingly, that she almost worries that Gendry will tire before she comes, and he clearly wants her to come. Hell, Arya really wants to come, even though she’s not sure she’ll be able to handle it.  But it does build.  She feels familiar pulsing between her legs that slowly creeps up her stomach, to her breasts, to her lips and soon her hips are rocking back and forth, back and forth, pushing into his tongue, his fingers, until she’s trembling, trembling, willing herself to break.

It washes over her like a wave, rolling and rolling through her.  Her cunt clenches around his fingers, and the muscles of her legs bunch together as if trying to push the orgasm up through her body even as it forces its way down to curl her toes.  She sees stars, sees red and gold and green dots behind her eyelids, and hears herself calling his name, over and over and over again. Her hands twine themselves against the cloth bindings, and she wishes she could run them through his hair. She could.  She could pull loose.  He told her how.  But something about being stuck like this makes it that much better. She can’t even cant her hips away from him to take his tongue away from her now throbbing clit.

He’s the one that moves away, ultimately.  She can’t feel his face between her legs anymore, and one by one, the ties are removed from them.  Then her arms are released and last, but not least, her blindfold. 

The candlelit room is harshly bright compared to the darkness of her blindfold, and Gendry’s eyes are very serious as he looks down at her.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Arya feels self-conscious.  He’s just made her come three times, he’s just had his tongue between her legs. And now she can see him and it really is Gendry—really and truly.  Not a dream, not a stranger with his voice, not a fantasy.  Gendry.  Gendry fully clothed, while she’s lying there, naked on his bed.

“You did well,” he says and his voice is thick.  “That will be all.”

She nods but doesn’t move. Gendry turns away from her and leaves the bedroom, closing the door behind him.  The second he’s gone, Arya bolts off the bed, tugging her clothes back on, wiping away the remainder of the wax that Gendry had poured onto her. She slips into her shoes and goes out into the darkened living room.  There’s a light on in the bathroom, but she can’t hear him making any noise in there at all. 

She should just go. She knows that. The scene is over, and they’d done it, and she had done well.  But it’s Gendry, and she doesn’t want his heart to be…doesn’t want her own heart to be…

Oh it wasn’t supposed to be confusing, but it is.  And she shouldn’t be surprised by that, and she really could kick herself. She should have known this would happen.  She goes towards the bathroom door, steels herself, and knocks on it twice.

“Gendry?”

He cracks the door open and she can’t read his expression at all.  She wonders if he can read hers. 

He opens the door a little wider, and she sees him tremble, sees him swallow.  Now she can read his expression.  Fear.  Nervousness.

“Thanks,” she whispers, and she stands on the tips of her toes and kisses him.  His lips are soft, and salty and taste like her. She knows she must still taste like him, too.  For a moment, his lips part beneath her and she tastes his breath, his sigh before he pulls away, not looking at her.

“I…not now, ok?” he says. He sounds like the words are killing him.  “Like…I don’t know. I just…”

“Come round to my place on Friday?  I’ll cook you dinner?” Arya says.  He jerks a nod, still not looking at her. 

She should leave. She knows it. 

“I’ll see you then,” she says, and turns away, grabbing her sweatshirt and her bag from the couch.

As the apartment door clicks shut behind her, she hears him blurt out.  “See you then.”

* * *

It’s another long week of not texting Gendry. 

She wants to. She definitely does. But just as the week before had felt full of unspoken awkwardness about the impending sex, this week felt as though anything she’d say would be her determinedly pushing past the fact of what they’d done and either pretending that it hadn’t happened, or that it hadn’t meant something.

Because the thing is that it had.  There is just no way to pretend that it hadn’t.  She could lie to herself and say that it’s just Gendry’s reaction that has her on edge—the fact that he’d been tense and nervous and had wanted to kiss her back but hadn’t wanted to right then…he was a little bit in love with her, and what they had done had clearly mattered to him.  She’d heard it in his voice, seen it in his eyes, felt it in his lips, his hands, his very presence.

She could lie to herself and say that it was just Gendry, and she needed to be careful because of his feelings.  But that would be lying to herself.

She’d crashed hard on Saturday night after she’d made her way back to her apartment, looking so freshly fucked in her reflection in the subway window, and had slept for twelve hours. She’d spent most of Sunday completely unable to forget the feeling of Gendry’s hands on her, of his voice telling her how responsive she was, the mental image—since she only had a mental image of it—of his lips between her legs, nuzzling into her.  His eyes were always closed in her mental image, and there was something reverent about it. 

She likes that image. She likes it a lot. And she spends Monday and Tuesday imagining Gendry.  She daydreams at her desk wondering what his cock actually looks like, and remembering just how wide it had been between her breasts, the sound of him crying out as he came into her throat.  She likes all of that very much.

But if it were just a matter of liking these mental images, these memories of Saturday night, it would be simple.  The problem arises that Arya can’t shake Gendry from her mind—not Gendry as he’d been in her blindfolded state, but Gendry and his glowers when he hasn’t had coffee yet, or Gendry and his shitty taste in techno music, or Gendry and how he always has to be right about everything.  That Gendry and the Gendry whose fingers had curled up inside her cunt on Saturday night were the same.  And she liked both of them independently of one another, but having them both be the same Gendry…

He’d looked so scared when he’d opened the bathroom door.  Scared that she’d run away, maybe, or scared that she wouldn’t. She hopes it’s the former, rather than the latter, because there’s a very serious part of her that wants to kiss him again, that wants to hug him and feel the muscles of his chest through his t-shirt as he hugs her back, that wants to kiss him and run her hands through his hair and hold him to her because she hadn’t been able to hold him to her when last she’d seen him. 

 _Seven pm?_ she texts him on Friday afternoon while she’s having lunch with Terrence and his friend Lommy.  Lommy, it seems, is his actual name, and Arya hides her astonishment at that, because who is actually named Lommy in the real world? Lommy Green, apparently.

_Should I bring anything?  Beer?_

_Stout?_

_You got it._

And there are stupid butterflies in her stomach.  Stupid fucking butterflies over Gendry bringing beer to dinner tonight.

“Something up?” Terrence asks.

“Just Gendry,” Arya shrugs, trying to look nonchalant, and taking a sip of her coke.

“Your boyfriend?” Lommy asks, and Arya chokes on her soda.

Terrence laughs. “Nah.  They’re just friends.”

Just friends. Just friends who’ve had some kinky sex and who would have kissed for longer except Gendry wasn’t quite ready to. She takes another sip. She really wants him to be ready to.  She’s scared he’ll panic, or think of some excuse. 

He gets to her apartment at six forty five and she buzzes him up before turning up the heat on her stove, the onions on the stove sizzling louder than they had been before. Gendry presents her with a six-pack, and follows her into the kitchen.

“Smells good,” he says. His voice is airy, too calm to be really calm.

“My mom used to say that ninety percent of the good cooking smell is just onions being delicious.”

Gendry considers for a second, then nods.  “Yep. That’s real.”

“Right?”

“You don’t think about it, but it’s true.”

“Yep.”

And just like that, they’re out of things to talk about.  Because she’s very obviously cooking hamburgers now that she’s grilled the onions to go on top of them, and their beers are rising to their lips at the same time, and there’s a flush that could be the heat of Arya’s tiny kitchen or remembering that the last time they’d been this close to one another, she’d had her lips pressed to his, and he’d been kissing her back.

“I’ve missed you,” Arya blurts out.  “This week. And last week.”

Gendry raises his eyebrows at her, and she sees confusion in his eyes.  “Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Like…Like I miss being able to text you about whatever and…” her voice trails away, and he responds exactly how she’d expect him to.

“You could have. I mean, I was here. I’d have replied.”

Arya shakes her head. “It wouldn’t have felt the same, though.”  He flinches, and takes another sip of beer, as Arya plows on.  “Not like that!  Like…Like I would have been pretending that last weekend wasn’t important, or significant somehow.  And it was.”

Gendry’s watching her carefully.  “Significant how?” he asks through gritted teeth, like he’s about to cut open a just-healed wound. 

Arya flips the burgers and prods them with her spatula before she continues.  “Like it was just a weekend.  Like just a thing that we did and it’s because we’re friends, and that’s all it was.”

“You’ve had sex with your friends before,” Gendry points out, and Arya wants to glare at him. It doesn’t feel fair that he’d bring that up right now, because the sex she’s had with Ned is so wholly irrelevant to this conversation.  Besides, sex with Ned was different, because Ned wasn’t Gendry.  Doing anything with Gendry somehow made it special. It always had.

“I wasn’t talking about the sex,” she says slowly, and watches as his eyes seem to glimmer for a moment before they go dark and he takes another sip of beer. 

“Oh?”

“I was talking about…” but the words are gone.  She doesn’t know what she wants to say.  Because what she wants to say is almost too straightforward, and sure, Gendry is a blunt person, and always has been, but this seems too blunt, and doesn’t take enough into account that he’s a little bit in love with her.  Or maybe it does—too much so. 

“You think of me differently,” Gendry says, sighing and leaning his hip into her counter. “And you want to just have it be like it was before, and it can’t be.”  He sounds determined, but also defeated, and even as he says the words, Arya’s shaking her head vehemently.

“No,” she insists. She turns to the pan and removes the burgers one by one onto a plate.  “I mean yes, but no.”

“Yes?”

“I do think of you differently, but…but I don’t want it to go back to the way it was before.”

Gendry looks confused, but not defensive, and Arya turns the heat off from the stove and takes a step towards him.  She’s standing right in front of him now, looking up at him and god his eyes are blue. So blue.  How has she never noticed just how blue they are before the past two weeks?

“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” she says quietly.  “It’s a lot and it’s confusing, but also not confusing at all.  Confusing because it’s not confusing. Because you’re my best friend, but…I don’t know.  I just…” she wants to look away but she doesn’t let herself.  And she sees his eyes flicker for a moment, then dawning comprehension.

“You meant that kiss,” he says slowly.  “The one afterwards. You meant it.  It wasn’t just a…I don’t know.  A thank you or something.”

“No, it wasn’t just a thank you.”  Her voice is barely more than a whisper, but it’s enough.  Gendry sets his beer on the counter and raises his hand, trembling to her neck, his thumb tracing circles just behind her ear.  And he bends to kiss her, and she melts into him, holding as tightly as she can, feeling his heart pounding against her chest, and knows that its rhythm matches her own.  Her hands fist in his t-shirt, and she nudges his lips apart with her tongue and moans when he rubs his against hers. 

Gendry breaks the kiss and she looks up at him confused.  His eyes are soft, and he raises a hand to brush a lock of hair out of her face. “Burgers aren’t good cold,” he said.  “And I feel like interrupting now would be better than interrupting later?”  It ends up a question, and Arya grins at him.

“There are buns in the oven,” she says and he sputters.  “Not  _that_  kind, stupid.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got you.”

They eat quickly, and Arya finds herself telling Gendry everything she could think of from the past two weeks.  It felt like a rush of words, built-up because she hadn’t known how to tell him, but now she could.  “And Terrence’s college friend Lommy is in town and I swear to god, Lommy’s his real name. I thought it was an unfortunate nickname.  It made sense, given Terrence.”

“What would Lommy be short for?” Gendry asks.

“No clue.”

“And what do you mean, ‘given Terrence’?”

Arya blushes. “Well…”

“Arya?”

“Terrence used to go by Hot Pie in college, apparently.  Because he was a mean baker.”

Gendry blinks at her twice then his face scrunches in mild horror.  “No.  No no. I don’t.  No.  Why?” Arya crows with laughter. “You had to pick Terrence’s…fuck. I’m literally never going to be able to look at him in the face again.”

“Yes you will,” Arya grins, leaning towards him, but he’s shaking his head, muttering the words “Hot Pie,” under his breath.  Arya snuggles next to him on the couch.  He’s warm, and the muscles in his chest are delightfully firm underneath her. She hadn’t really felt them before, when he’d had her tied to the bed and he’d worked her over. Now, though…just one more thing she was noticing about him.  His muscles, and how big his hands were as they come to rest on her waist, and how he smells—vaguely pepperminty, but not enough to cover up what is undeniably  _him_.  Her grin widens.

“What now?” he asks. She tilts her head up and looks at him, smiling. 

“I like this,” she whispers.  “I like us. Like this.”

Gendry’s frown softens slightly and he shifts, so that he’s lying a little more underneath her. He reaches up and cups her face in his large hands.  “Yeah. I kind of have trouble believing it’s real,” he says quietly.  “Like…shit I was so convinced tonight would be a disaster and I’d be completely fucked up all weekend and it wouldn’t go away.  But instead,” his thumb brushes across her cheek.

For a moment, she thinks he’s going to kiss her again, and she’s so ready for it, but he closes his eyes and his face goes still. “What’s up?” she asks.

“I just…I don’t know what…” he grimaces. “I don’t want to bring it up now.”

“Bring what up now?”

“It’ll put a damper on the evening.”

“I’m still not following,” she says, and Gendry opens his eyes and with an expression that reads as pure disbelief in what he’s doing, what he’s about to say, he says, “the BDSM bit.”

“What about it?” Arya asks.

“You’re not a sub, and I am a Dom.”

“So?”

“So…” his voice trails away for a second.  “Right it’s like…relevant to how I have sex.”

“What, every time?” And Gendry rolls his eyes at her.

“Not every time, but not not every time, you know?  Like it’s… I don’t know.  It sounds ridiculous to say it’s part of me, because honestly, I haven’t had a good grip on the frame of mind lately because of you, but it’s also…”

“You like it,” Arya shrugs.

“Yeah.  It feels good.”

She chews her lip, and his eyes flicker to her lips and she sees a flush creep up his face. She smiles, her lip still between her teeth, and he groans.

“So how about this,” she says.  “Yeah. I know.  I’m not a sub.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t like…I don’t know…work with it sometimes.  Not all the time, mind.  But like…we’ll figure it out.”  Gendry frowns, thinking, and Arya presses on.  “Like, I know it’s not a permanent solution.  Or even a real answer.  But it’s something to get started with, and we’ll keep talking about it.”

Gendry’s face relaxes and a smile lights up his face.  She pulls herself up and kisses him again, and this time, when his tongue runs along hers, he doesn’t break away.  His hands are on her hips and his fingers are gripping her so tightly and she loves it. 

She feels him grow hard beneath her, his cock stiff through his blue jeans, and she rubs against it with her hips, feeling his heart thud against her chest.  That’s when he breaks the kiss, and looks up at her, and she can see just how black his blue eyes have become.  “I’m conflicted,” he says.  “I really want to fuck you right now, but…but I’m sort of…I don’t know it feels presumptuous.  Like just because I’ve done it already or…”

Arya gets up and he looks crestfallen for half a second before she grabs his hand and drags him to his feet.  She kisses him hard, nibbling his lip, her hands resting on his shoulders as she stands on her tip-toes to kiss him.  “It’s not presumptuous,” she whispers, then marches towards her bedroom, stripping off her t-shirt to prove the point. 

Gendry closes the door behind him, and then sits down next to Arya on her bed.  He kisses her neck, along her collarbone, down towards the cup of her bra.  Arya reaches over to the base of his t-shirt and runs her hand underneath it, playing with the dark hair on his belly.  He shifts, and she tugs his shirt up over his head.

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters.  She’d never seen him shirtless before.  Not once. He wasn’t the type to randomly take off his top in summer, and she’d been dying with cramps the one time they’d gone out to Terrence’s beach place and hadn’t actually gone to the beach at all.  She’d never once seen just how his abs rippled in what would uncharitably be called a six-pack.

“What?” he asks.

“Your chest, stupid,” she says and she pushes him down and begins to kiss along the center line of his abs.   He snorts and runs a hand along her arms. 

“Glad to meet with your approval,” he says dryly, and she ignores him—or rather, focuses too much on his skin to listen to his voice.  The hair on his stomach and chest is soft.  Feather light, really, and she kisses patterns into it, making her way up to his chest before trailing her tongue over the flat disk of his nipple.  He inhales sharply, and his hand is gone from her arm now and is rolling her own nipple between his fingers through the cotton of her bra.  She makes a little noise of pleasure.

“I love the noises you make,” he whispers.  “When you like what I’m doing.”  She feels herself blushing and isn’t sure how to respond, so she switches to his other nipple. His breath hitches, and he shifts slightly, and a moment later she hears the sound of his shoes falling to the ground.  Then he sits up and draws her lips up to his, his tongue tracing her lips.

His hand is behind her back, and she feels the clasp of her bra spring apart, and she grins into his lips. “Well done there.”

Gendry rolls his eyes. “I think I can handle a hook and eye clasp at this point.  It’s not exactly hard, comparatively speaking.”

“You’d be surprised,” she says.  “The number of people who are undone by them.”

“Idiots,” Gendry says, a smirk playing at his lips.  He slides the bra down her arms and then pushes her down on the bed, his lips finding one of her nipples and his fingers finding the other, and Arya loses track of the witty response she’d been preparing because that feels nice. Very nice.  Just the right balance of gentleness and pressure, not quite painful, but not bland and flavorless either. 

“Yes.”  She weaves his fingers through his hair, relishing being able to, relishing how soft his hair is under her hands.

She rubs her foot up and down his leg through his jeans, and a moment later, Gendry’s hand leaves her breast and comes down to the top of her pants, finding the catch in them and unzipping them.  “This ok?” he asks her.

She rolls her eyes at him, and he raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t move.  “Yes,” she says.  “Yes, stupid.”

“Consent isn’t stupid,” he responds, and she feels her stomach squirm. She sits up and kisses him, drawing his lower lip between her teeth and gently biting down. His hand slips down into her pants and she gasps when his finger finds her clit, and circles around it twice before sliding back out.  He pushes her back down on the bed, then tugs her pants down her legs and throws them to the floor.  He trails his fingers along the inside of her thighs, where he’d smacked her with his crop not even a week before and he looks down at her.

“What do you have in mind?” he asks.

“Really whatever,” she replies.  “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”  He’d been the one that had taken vaginal sex off the table last week, after all. And he’d already eaten her out and fingered her, so what else was there?

“Do you have condoms?” he asks her.  His voice trembles slightly, and she sits up and kisses his lips, then his cheek, then his throat, then a line down his chest.

“IUD,” she replies, smiling up at him.

“Ok then,” he breathes, and his fingers leave her thighs and Arya whimpers because he’s slid two fingers inside her and it feels so fucking good, and his other hand is coming up to brush along the underside of her breasts again. 

“Gendry,” she moans as his thumb swipes at her clit again and the sensation of it shoots right up her spine. 

He chuckles slightly, and she looks up at him to glare, but can’t quite bring herself, not when he looks like that.  His cheeks are flushed, his lips are wet and his eyes are positively glowing and he looks so wildly happy, so completely pleased with himself that it almost feels cruel to say or do anything.  Anything that’s not this, anyway, the two of them in bed, and—

Arya reaches a hand down and cups his cock through his jeans.  He lets out a hiss, and his fingers slow inside her, and she shifts, kissing his neck again.  “Yeah?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

And she fumbles one handed with his belt.  “You’re having more trouble there than I did with your bra.”

“Shut up.”

He laughs again, and pulls his fingers out of her, running his hands up and down her back. She feels a warm wet trail of her own juices on her skin.  It shouldn’t turn her on as much as it does. 

She pulls his cock loose and fuck, just fuck, because it’s bigger than she’d imagined it being, and she’d had him in her mouth last weekend.  She shoves at his pants and drags them off his legs to join hers on the floor, and then she pushes him back down so he’s lying down flat on his back again.  She straddles him, and takes his cock in her hands and pumps it once, twice, before settling herself over his length.  Not his crown—not just yet. 

“Fuck,” he breathes as she rubs her hips along him, dripping over his shaft.  She buries her face in his neck, kissing and sucking and already spying the beginnings of hickies blooming across his skin. His hands grip her hips, and he pulls her hips faster, and she feels him rock beneath her.  But he doesn’t push into her—not just yet. She’s glad of that. She likes this. Likes the sway of them, the push and pull, the anticipation, that’s only heightened by the way her nipples trail along his chest as she slides up and down him.

He’s started moaning. Not intense moans, ones that might indicate that he’s close to coming.  Just hums of pleasure, and when Arya does sit up, she sees that his eyes are closed and there’s a contented smile on his face.  She reaches down between them and takes his cock again. It’s slick from her, and she pumps it lazily, waiting for him to open his eyes.  She wants his eyes open when she pulls him into her. She wants to see his face. Wants him to see her.

His eyes do crack open after a minute or two.  They’re hooded, and she almost can’t see any blue at all at this point.  “I’m going to fuck you now,” she tells him.

“Yes,” he practically growls, and Arya lifts her hips, and positions him under her and cries out as she stretches around him, her head falling forward and her eyes fluttering shut for half a second before she forces them open again because she wants to see his face—wants to see him.

His mouth is open, his lips are dry and his eyes are so awash with emotion that it makes Arya’s breath catch in her throat.  He’s breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling, and Arya reaches her hands over and runs them over his stomach and chest, across his arms until his hands are in hers.  Then and only then does she begin to move again, her hips rocking slowly, steadily, her knees and thighs flexed to support the movements, and her cunt—it’s so full, stretched around him, and slick and warm and it feels so good to have him sliding in and out of her, his skin soft against hers. 

Gendry never once looks away from her, and she doesn’t look away from him.  His grip on her hands is tight, and he lifts one of her hands to his lips and kisses it.  Then he lets go of her and rests his hand on her waist, holding her steady while she rocks on top of him.  It doesn’t stay there long.  He reaches up to brush her breasts, to trace lines over her back, over her stomach. His hand never stays put, while the other stays put in her hand, his fingers woven between hers.

She doesn’t know how long it takes that wandering hand to come between her legs but when it does she lets out a moan and feels herself growing even wetter around him. “Fuck,” he breathes again, and his finger begins to circle around her clit.  “Fuck, Arya.  Just fuck.”

And she does. She pushes into his hand in one direction and into his cock in the other, no matter where her hips are, she’s warm, and her breath is beginning to come in short gasps because she’s moving so fast now, so fast, and not fast enough. His fingers on her clit are moving faster now too, and his cock inside her is twitching, twitching because he’s close, and she’s close and she feels him coming inside her, hears him cry out as his hips rise off the bed to push into her again and again and again, his eyes closed, his face a mask of pleasure.  She loves the feeling of him coming inside her, the sudden heat of him flooding her and she clenches her muscles around him as tight as she can while he thrusts, and thrusts and thrusts.

He pulls his cock out of her when he’s done, and he releases her other hand to slide three fingers inside her.  He pumps his hand two, three, four times and with a flick to her clit, she’s falling apart on top of him, gasping and crying out and breathing heavily.  She falls forward, pressing her chest to his and breathing that pepperminty scent of him in as blood continues to roar through her and her heart thuds in her chest. 

How long they lie like that, she’s not sure.  At some point, he reaches over and turns off the light by her bed and she drifts into a relaxed stupor.  When she does awaken, she’s curled up next to him, her back to his chest and his arms around her. His breathing is steady, and he’s so warm next to her, and Arya grins, and kisses his palm.

His lips press to her shoulder, and his arms tighten around her for a moment, and all Arya can think is that this is right.  This is right.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! I've had some people asking after a sequel so I'm going to make a blanket statement that there won't be one, unfortunately. At this point, I try not to write sequels unless I intend to write sequels. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


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